I stooped down, dragging her panties back into place, flipping her skirt down, and moving away before the door opened, letting in an agitated Alexander and an exasperated Laird who had been stuck on teenager babysitting duty since we arrived.
"What did he do?" I asked, glancing between them, keeping Melody in my peripheral as her hand slipped to the sink, turning it on, washing.
"That girl we thought he was visiting with in town? She's a thirty-something-year-old divorcee."
"Well, older women are a family tradition for first times," Melody offered, shooting me a teasing smile as she turned, drying her hands.
"Who said it is my first time?" Alexander shot back, chest puffing out. Which pretty much just proved it was. True confidence—like that which came from sexual experience—was quiet. Being loud just said he had no fucking idea what he was doing with a woman yet.
"Does she know he's underage?" I asked, shaking my head. He was tall and strong for his age. There was still a little baby fat in the face, but other than that, I could see him being confused for eighteen.
"She knows," Laird told me. "I told her."
"Hence the sulking," I agreed, jerking my chin toward my brother.
"I'm not fucking sulking," he shot back, clearly making my point.
"Watch how you talk to your brother," Melody scolded him before I could.
"This is a family matter," he shot back, in full-on intolerable teenager mode.
"Watch it, Alexander," I growled, making him stiffen slightly, realizing he was stepping over a line, one I thought I had made clear just an hour before. "You want to prove you are mature enough to spend your time with grown women, learn how to speak to the ones in this house with a little respect."
"I hate you sometimes," Alexander hissed as he pushed past me, making a beeline for his room.
As he went he was chased by Melody's voice, "Then he must be doing something right!" she called at his retreating form. "He's a perfectly nice kid. Right up until he's a little shit," she said, smiling.
"Welcome to adolescence," I agreed.
"I kind of understand why all my rich clients ship their high-school aged children off to some boarding school or another. Let them deal with the backtalk and idiocy, send them back when they are more fully formed individuals. Who don't blast terrible music," she added as the stereo came on a few floors above, making the walls shake.
"I'll have a word with the woman," I told the tired-looking Laird.
"Thank you," he said, moving off, leaving us alone once again.
The song above us changed to something louder, more angsty, with a baseline that cut right through your brain even a few floors below.
"If I have kids, do you think they will be this obnoxious?"
"Probably," I agreed, moving in beside her.
"It really makes you develop an understanding for those species who eat their young, y'know?" she added when Alexander decided to lend his vocals to the chorus, making our shoulders pull up to our ears. He never could carry a tune. At high decibels, they splattered around tonelessly.
"I hear they're sweet when they're little," I told her.
"That's how they get you," she said, nodding. "They come out fat and squishy and completely in love with you. Then they morph into hormone monsters with more opinion than brains. That's why parents take so many pictures and videos of the fat and squishy phase. To help remind themselves that they love the teenaged terrorists who take over their body in fifteen years."
Listening to her babble, watching the animated confusion and amusement and wonder play out across her face, I amended my thought from earlier.
Maybe I was a little bit in love with her already.
Just a little bit.
But it had started.
And I wanted to see where it would go.
Then he showed up.
And everything changed.
FOURTEEN
Miller
What did you get someone who had absolutely everything?
Whatever that was, I needed to get one for Bellamy.
I never thought I would thank a man for drugging, kidnapping, and conning me into taking a job I didn't want to take.
Yet, here we were.
In a beautiful home in Zagori, Greece.
Cut off from the rest of the world.
With only one another to keep each other company.
And, believe me, Christopher and I found some very, very good ways to keep each other company.
Most of our ideas involved nudity.
And I was all for that.
I didn't know what was going on with Christopher's investigation, with his plan to track down Chernev. To be perfectly honest, I didn't want to know. Because I worried that if I knew, it would shatter this secluded little life we were living. Where there were no such things as friends or jobs or lives to get back to.
So long as I stayed willfully ignorant, I could pretend this was all there was.
The craziest part?
I was happy with that.
I was not someone who liked to be in the dark, who left everything in someone else's hands. No matter how capable those hands may be. I needed to be informed. I needed to be involved.
Except now.
Where I was pretty sure I would stick my fingers in my ears and hum like someone about to get spoilers regarding a highly anticipated movie, if someone even hinted at news from the outside world.
Because I was happy.
I had honestly not been able to name it for an embarrassingly long time. Seven days passed after we made it into bed before I could finally identify the light, floating feeling inside, the way everything seemed brighter and more beautiful.
But I found myself staring out the window one evening after dinner, my arms plunged in warm, soapy dishwater, watching Christopher run across the deck to chase the quickly disappearing form of his younger brother, who seemed very determined to get his sexual education from a woman almost old enough to be his mother.
And a big, stupid, goofy-ass grin spread until my cheeks hurt.
It was right then that I recognized the feeling that had been flooding my system for days.
Happiness.
It was approximately five seconds after that when the smile fell, and a sinking feeling settled in my stomach. Because if this was what happy felt like, I wasn't entirely sure I had ever been happy before. At least not for longer than a few moments.
That was sad, wasn't it? To make it to my thirties without knowing any sort of lasting joy.
That seemed sad.
But it made so much make sense.
Why I chased the fleeting pleasure of a job well done, the pride of respect among important men and women, the praise from my boss and colleagues.
Because it gave me just enough to keep going, to convince myself that my life was well balanced, that I was happy with it.
When, if I had even two full days put together where I wasn't darting off to some foreign place to fix someone else's problem, I would figure out that I had more than a few of my own that needed tending to.
Like the emptiness of my existence.
Like the fact that, if you asked me to describe happiness, I wouldn't have been able to come up with a single convincing definition.
And, I guess, if I thought about it, really dug deep and mucked through all the ugly of my life, I would have to admit that I hadn't felt anything but a vague sort of contentment.